A Critical Exploration of Queer Temporalities in Slightly Burnt

Abstract

This paper inspects the idea of queer temporality in Slightly Burnt (2014), a young adult novel by Payal Dhar that explores the themes of friendship, family, LGBTQ+ identity, within the heteronormative societal norms of Indian society. In consideration of Jack Halberstam’s notion of queer time, this study examines how the novel disrupts conventional, heteronormative understandings of adolescence and life progression. By portraying queer time as nonlinear milestone of life cycle, the novelist has tried to portray the different vision of adolescence. While queer theory has increasingly informed readings of Western young adult literature, there remains a noticeable gap in scholarship that examines queer temporalities in Indian young adult fiction. This study aims to address that gap by situating Slightly Burnt within the emerging discourse on queer time in non-Western contexts, offering a culturally grounded understanding of how time, identity, and belonging are renegotiated through narrative. The novel challenges the normative expectations placed on youth to conform to socially accepted paths, using the tension between Komal’s confusion and Sahil’s clarity to depict the conflict queer individuals often experience in aligning their internal sense of time with the external pressures of social conformity. The disruption of friendship, the re-evaluation of familial bonds, and the struggle for self-acceptance are not presented as sequential milestones. Consequently, Dhar establishes a framework for understanding queer adolescence as temporality and emotionally distinct from heteronormative models. Slightly Burnt thus becomes a critical text for examining how narratives of queer youth in Indian literature can offer alternative modes of belonging, identity formation, and temporal experience.